Jackson Free Press

The results are in, and Mississippi has lost out on its part of a $500 million pot to improve early-childhood education. Now, politicians and education advocates can't quite agree on who's to blame for the state's bad grades.

Mississippi applied for Race to the Top funding last year but did not get it. The state applied for the Early Learning Challenge grant in October this year as part of the Race to the Top program that rewards states for innovation and reform in public schools. This year, the state was hoping to get $50 million to better coordinate early childhood education providers around the state.

Part of the reason Mississippi didn't get the grant was that Race to the Top generally rewards states with programs already in place. While Mississippi has a hodgepodge of agencies and organizations providing pre-kindergarten programs, it is one of only 10 states without statewide, public early childhood education.

Before the state turned in its application, Rachel Canter, executive director of the education advocacy organization Mississippi First, said states that have gotten Race to the Top grants in the past have, for the most part, already had the basic building blocks of strong programs in place and based their grant applications on plans to improve them.

"I think we are at a disadvantage, because we do not have state resources at any discernible level in early-childhood education," she said at the time. "... As a state, we haven't shown that strong commitment that other states (have)."

A panel of five judges reviewed Mississippi's application. They gave it an average score of 11.2 points out of 20 for demonstrating past commitment to early learning and development. The reviewers ranked Mississippi No. 35 of 37 applicants, ahead of Hawaii and Puerto Rico.

Gov. Haley Barbour apparently has a different idea of why the state's application failed. After the U.S. Department of Education announced the grantees, Barbour issued a one-sentence statement to the press, expressing his displeasure.

"Of the nine states that got a Race to the Top award, only one has a Republican governor. I wish it had been us."

Annjo Lemons, executive director of the State Early Childhood Advisory Council, said she doesn't know why Mississippi was ranked as poorly as it was. The council led the state's application process for the grant.

"I thought our application was a very valid look at the criteria that they put forth, and they specifically were targeting high-poverty and mostly rural states," she said.

In the past, some have criticized the Race to the Top program for rewarding programs that are better suited to urban areas and might not work as well in largely rural states like Mississippi. This time around, the application information said judges "may consider the need to ensure that systems are developed in states with large, high-poverty, rural communities" in addition to other relevant factors.

When the Department of Education announced Race to the Top grantees last year, The New York Times reported that educators in rural states felt that the competition was tilted to favor more densely populated states. In the article, critics complained that the type of reforms the program was designed to reward—such as charter schools and replacing principals in failing schools—simply do not work in rural areas. Many small towns already struggle to retain staff, critics said, and do not have the population to support a new charter school.

Lemons also pointed to the number of states that received Early Learning Challenge awards that had already gotten Race to the Top grants. Of the nine states that received awards in this round, six had already received Race to the Top awards.

Despite the disappointment of losing out on $50 million in federal funding, Lemons said many of the people who worked on writing the grant are seeking private funding for some of the most important programs written into the grant application, such as compensation for childcare providers to further their education.

"It has made us even more determined that we're going to find some way to make a difference and move things forward for children," she said. "... I think what we're going to have to do is get grassroots about the whole thing and educate the state about (the need for early childhood education)."

She doesn't see state funding for early childhood education happening any time soon.

"It's hard times right now, if you look at the budget and all the planned decreases in all the agencies," she said. "Some (will get) level funding, which is fine and dandy, but it leaves no funding at all as far as anything going on birth to kindergarten."